UN Security Council Toughens Sanctions On North Korea

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The United Nations Security Council on September 11 voted to tighten sanctions on North Korea over the country's sixth and most powerful nuclear test, imposing a ban on the country's textile exports and setting a limit on imports of crude oil, RFE/RL reports.

It was the ninth sanctions resolution unanimously adopted by the 15-member council since 2006 over North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

North Korea on September 12 rejected the UN resolution and said the United States would soon face the "greatest pain" it had ever experienced.

Pyongyang's ambassador Han Tae Song, addressing the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, said the United States was "fired up for political, economic, and military confrontation" and was "obsessed with the wild game of reversing" North Korea's "development of a nuclear force which has already reached the completion phase."

To win the support of Russia and China, which had been reluctant to impose new sanctions, UN diplomats told news agencies that the United States watered down its previous proposal for a full oil embargo, eliminated a proposed asset freeze on leader Kim Jong Un, and included language calling for a "peaceful, diplomatic, and political" resolution of the standoff on the Korean Peninsula.